Category Archives: 2014 Books

Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles

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“I am blind and old, Antigone, my child.”

Now blind and aged, Oedipus, with his daughter, Antigone, arrive at a place just outside of Athens called Colonus.  Though warned by a villager that this place in which they wish to reside is sacred, possessed by the all-seeing Eumenides (Furies), a land of Poseidon and Prometheus, and the founding stone of Athens, Oedipus refuses to leave.  A past prophecy has determined that the sacred grove of the Eumenides at Colonus, will be the site of his death, and here he is determined to stay.

Oedipus at Colonus
Jean-Antoine-Théodore (1788)
source Wikipedia

When a chorus of men of the city arrive and, upon learning the identity of Oedipus, they attempt to persuade him to depart from their city, fearing his curse will bring trouble to them.  Oedipus defends his position by agruing that because he had no knowledge of his crimes, he is therefore not responsible for the consequences, in particular, claiming self-defence in the murder of his father, Laius.

But lo, into the fray rides his daughter, Ismene, bringing news that Oedipus’ youngest son, Eteocles, has seized the throne of Thebes from the elder, Polynices, and both sons have heard from the oracle that the outcome of their conflict will depend entirely on the location of their father’s burial.  Yet there is more treachery!  Creon (brother-in-law to Oedipus) is, as she speaks, on his way to ensure that Oedipus will be buried at the border of Thebes, without the ceremony, in an attempt to negate the oracle’s proclamation.
Oedipus at Colonus
Fulchran-Jean Harriet (1798)
source Wikipedia

Denouncing them all as villains, Oedipus meets with Theseus, King of Athens who shows sympathy for his predicament, offering unconditional protection and making him a citizen of his country.  How Oedipus praises his saviour, and declares that his beneficent actions will ensure Athens victory in any altercation with Thebes!

When Theseus exits, Antigone announces the advent of Creon.  At first, he attempts to manipulate Oedipus using pity, but when he sees this tact will not bring him success, he admits to kidnapping Ismene, and grabs Antigone to forcibly take her away.  Theseus returns in kingly grandeur to scold Creon, then the Athenians overpower the Thebians, returning both girls to their father.

Oedipus Cursing Polynices (1786)
Henri Fuseli
source Wikipedia

One thinks that at last Oedipus might get some peace in his last hours, but it is not to be.  Informed by Theseus that a suppliant has arrived to speak with him, he learns it is his son, Polynices, who begs his father to release the curse he had placed on his sons for their part in his banishment from Thebes, knowing that their conflict is a result of the curse.  Oedipus, in complete disgust of his offspring, refuses and Polynices exits to meet his near-certain fate.

A thunderstorm ensues, which portends Oedipus’ passing.  Oedipus gifts Theseus with the promised gift of protection for Athens and then passes into Hades.  When Antigone wishes to see his tomb, Theseus refuses in response to a promise to Oedipus, never to reveal the location of his tomb.  Antigone departs to attempt to stop her brothers’ conflict.

There is a curious dichotomy in this play with regard to the character of Oedipus.  In spite of the fact he is an exiled, blind old man, with a terrible curse upon him, rarely do you find him subject to the other characters.  In fact, Antigone listens closely to his counsel, he has a command and influence over Theseus, he manages to overcome Creon, and also best his son by refusing to assist him.  On the outside, he is aged, infirm and at the mercy of his hosts, but in actuality, Oedipus is the master of each situation.

Yet Oedipus also places emphasis on his innocence with regard to his crimes.  Again and again, he proclaims to the chorus of Athenian men that he had no pre-knowledge of his transgressions and was, therefore, blameless.  This was a different reaction from Oedipus Rex, where he seemed to take the crimes on to himself, and punish himself for them.

The Death of Oedipus (1784)
Henry Fuseli
source Wikipedia

While on one level, the trials and sufferings born by Oedipus seemed somewhat random in Oedipus Rex, in Oedipus at Colonus we see a culmination of prophecy.  By his exile, Oedipus is brought to the sacred grove of the Eumenides (Furies), fulfilling prophecy, and although this exile was brought about by a curse, Oedipus is actually turned into a hero-type figure by bringing blessing and protection upon the important city of Athens.

Of the 123 plays that Sophocles wrote, only seven complete plays have survived.  That makes me want to cry.  However, parts of plays are still being discovered.  In 2005, additional fragments of a play about the second siege of Thebes, Epigoni, were discovered by employing infrared technology by classicists at Oxford University.  So there is hope that the ancients can still speak to us through time (and new technology) and, as Gandalf said, that is a very comforting thought, indeed!

The book was completed for my Classics Club Spin #6.

Translated by David Grene
Edited by David Grene & Richard Lattimore

⇐  Oedipus Rex  

 

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

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“I seemed to be standing in a busy queue by the side of a long, mean street.”

If you found yourself in Hell and then were offered a chance to leave and spend an eternity in Heaven, you’d jump at it, wouldn’t you? …….. Or would you …….??

The Great Divorce tells of a journey of souls from the grey town, which we soon see represents Hell, to a wide open space of meadows, rivers and mountains.  Yet when the people disembark they are dismayed.  They now appears as Ghosts and all the vegetation is dense and tough in a way that makes movement difficult and, at times, dangerous.  And who are these shining Solid People coming towards them, and what do they want?  Full of joy and laughter, it appears that they only wish for the “Ghosts” to shed their prejudices and grudges and self-absorption and “rights”, to accept help and rescue from their troubles.  ‘Come to the mountain’, they say, yet most are unable to, so firmly have these detrimental traits taken root within them, to the exclusion of anything good.

The Assumption of the Virgin by Francesco Botticini
shows three hierarchies and nine orders of angels
source Wikipedia

The Great Divorce is Lewis’ The Divine Comedy.  As Dante is the narrator of The Divine Comedy, so too, the narrator in The Great Divorce is Lewis himself. George MacDonald, the well-known author of The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes, and At The Back of the North Wind, a man whose writings had a profound affect on Lewis, serves as his Virgil, a guide to bring him understanding of Heaven and similarly, the grey town of Hell.

Yet while analogous in structure, the Hell of The Great Divorce is very different than that of Dante’s Hell.  It is not a world of men trapped in flaming tombs, immersed in rivers of blood and fire, whipped by demons or eaten by foul creatures.  In The Great Divorce, Hell looks surprisingly like Earth, but a corruption of earth, holding only the negative components of greed, envy, self-worship, revenge, jealously, grudges, etc.  The setting mirrors the emotions, being bleak, desolate and lacking any human goodness.  Rain and dingy twilight permeate the town, and a perpetual feeling of hopelessness is ever-present.  Yet while the souls of this dreary place, recognize intellectually what they live in, and practically understand their actions, they have become drowned in them through excuses, trends, weakness of character, reliance on intellect only, and have become blind to their effects.  In life, they allowed their choices and actions to carry them in the wrong direction and now have little desire to escape.  They have chosen Hell and are unable to conceive of anything outside of it.  Similar to the dwarves in the The Last Battle, ignorance has overcome them and they cannot escape it.

A vision of Hell
from Dante’s Divine Comedy
source Wikipedia

Lewis’ presentation of Hell is not only easily understandable, it is quite fascinating.  Lewis’ Hell is not a Hell for people.  Each “person” there, is there of their own choice, and their descent into it has been a gradual process, and not because of one big sin.  Each of their choices has progressively dehumanized them; it is not that they are beyond salvation, rather that there is no shred of humanness left to save.  Lewis also emphasizes the smallness of Hell by having the bus, not actually travel but grow, sprouting from a small crack in the soil to emerge in Heaven.  Hell, to Lewis is a tiny place and anything that lives there is already withered away.

On the other hand, the Bright or Solid People of Heaven did not get there through moral perfection.  One had been a murderer and confessed to doing worse than that, while another was hardly known on Earth but the people and animals that came into her presence were enriched by her love and charity.  And again, we have another echo from The Last Battle, that Heaven is much more real than earth, exemplified by the tough grass, the hard rivers and terrain that the Ghosts experience and would only have a change of perception if they chose to accept the invitation to become more real.

While Lewis states in his preface that this book is an answer to William Blakes’ The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, he makes if very clear that it is not a story that is meant to be taken in a literal sense; like his Narnia Chronicles, it is a supposition.  More, it is a work that explores human biases, perceptions and attitudes that either allow us to or prevent us from getting closer to God.

C.S. Lewis Project 2014

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

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“It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills”

Yes, I went out of my comfort zone!  The Big Sleep is not a book I would usually choose to read, but since it’s on my Guardian 1000 list and a group on Goodreads was reading it for June, I decided to take the plunge.  Initially, I was rather apprehensive because I had read The Maltese Falcon a few years ago and didn’t enjoy it.  Yet within a few pages, I was completely immersed in this story.

Philip Marlowe; private detective; wise guy.  L.A. in the late 1930s.  A millionaire with two wild, uncontrollable daughters.  A missing son-in-law. Can Marlowe navigate the perilous world of high-society, which takes him into the shady dens of gangsters, gambling and murder, to extract truth from a myriad of lies?

With Marlowe was born one of the first of the new detectives.  The description he gives of himself in the beginning of the novel is a dry, witty sketch:

“I’m thirty-three years old, went to college once and can still speak English if there’s a demand for it.  There isn’t much in my trade.  I worked for Mr. Wilde, the District Attorney, as an investigator once.  His chief investigator, a man named Bernie Ohls, called me and told me you wanted to see me.  I’m unmarried because I don’t like policemen’s wives …………. I was fired.  For insubordination.  I test very high on insubordination, General.”

Los Angeles City Hall (1931)
source Wikipedia

The Big Sleep euphemistically refers to death and there are more than a few murders in this tale.  Billed as Chandler’s first novel, it is actually two of his short stories combined:  The Curtain and Killer in the Rain.  In it, he sets the scene with a flourishing skill:

“The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom.  The glass walls and roof were heavily misted and big drops of moisture splashed down on the plants.  The light had an unreal greenish colour, like light filtered through an aquarium tank.  The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men. They smelled as overpowering as boiling alcohol under a blanket.”

Curiously, while this is a mystery novel, Chandler often seems more concerned with the setting and characters than the minute details of the plot. Scenes are depicted with meticulous detail, and the characters each have personalities that radiate out, like the beacon of a lighthouse cutting through the mist.  Their charm, or helplessness, or audacity, or coquettishness is distinct and compelling.  In fact, the producer of the movie, The Big Sleep, contacted Chandler to remind him that in the novel, he had never revealed who had killed the chauffeur and asked for the identity of the murderer. Chandler replied that he had no idea.

 I really admired Philip Marlowe’s brash confidence, his raw sense of humour and his composure in dangerous situations.  Often impolitic and impertinent, nevertheless his understanding of human nature and the complexity of people’s personalities, made him a lively, compelling character.  With this work, Chandler managed to avoid the cliche 1930s male detective and invented a character and a book worth reading.  Very enjoyable!

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

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“Children, young sons and daughters of old Cadmus, why do you sit here with your suppliant crowns?”

A dark curse is upon Thebes.  Blighted cattle and plants cover the land, the women are barren and a deadly plague creeps throughout the kingdom, sparing no one in its fatal grasp.  Creon, brother-in-law to King Oedipus, reveals that the curse placed on the kingdom is a result of the murder of its last king, Laius, and until the perpetrator is found, there is no hope of relief from their present woes.  Oedipus, king of Thebes, calls the wisest man to the palace, the blind prophet, Teiresias, to discover the identity of the vile culprit.  
Yet through wise Teiresias and the shepherds of Laius, it is revealed that Oedipus was unwittingly the killer, slaying the king on a road to Thebes, in self-defence and completely unaware of his victim’s identity.  Unbeknownst to Oedipus, he was fulfilling a prior prophecy, that he would kill his father and marry his mother.  And true to prophecy, Oedipus, after freeing Thebes from a different curse by solving the riddle of the Sphinx, became the new king of Thebes and married the current queen, Jocasta, also his mother.

Oedipus after he solves the riddle
of the Sphinx (1808)
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
source Wikipedia

Upon hearing the fulfillment of the curse, a stunned and horrified Oedipus flees, yet soon finds Jocasta has hanged herself with shame and, grabbing the brooches from her garments, dashes his eyes out until blood flows in rivers down his face. At the behest of Oedipus, Creon banishes him from the city.

The sins of murder and incest has blighted the life of Oedipus and the lives of his progeny; his sons will be left without a father or inheritance and his daughters will be ostracized, unable to marry.  His anguished speech carries notes of his misery and devastation:

“What can I see to love?
What greeting can touch my ears with joy?
Take me away, and haste —– to a place out of the way!
Take me away, my friends, the greatly miserable,
the most accursed, whom God too hates
above all men on earth!”

The state of blindness and the character of Oedipus are closely linked. Instead of listening to the wisdom of the blind prophet, Teiresias, Oedipus refuses to believe him, therefore choosing blindness over knowledge.  Later in the play, when he accepts the knowledge of his actions, he physically blinds himself, which echoes his emotional blindness earlier in the story.

Can one commit a crime with complete lack of awareness and still be responsible for the repercussions of his actions?  Is the harshness of Oedipus’ penalty and the suffering he endures from the consequences, a justifiable outcome given the circumstances?  Why does no one in the kingdom disagree with the punishment of Oedipus, and appear more shocked by the unintentional sins than the maiming he inflicts upon himself?

Oedipus Separating from Jocasta
Alexandre Cabanel
source Wikipedia

What we can take away from this drama is helplessness in the hands of fate.  Though everyone pities Oedipus and does not blame him, there is nothing they can do in the face of his punishment.  To the Greeks, fate is supreme and unaffected by human choice; Oedipus attempts to avoid his destiny yet only succeeds in bringing it to fruition.  Finally, we are exposed to a chilling Greek worldview, that we can “Count no mortal happy till he has passed the limit of his life secure from pain.”

Apparently Oedipus Rex, while first chronologically of the three Theban plays, is in fact the second in written order.  I will enjoy trying to find out the common threads between the three, and if I feel there are any inconsistencies due to the fact they were composed out of order.  The next one on the schedule is Oedipus at Colonus where we meet Oedipus in exile.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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“You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.”

Gaining a passionate, yet unguided knowledge for science, young Victor Frankenstein arrives at university with an unquenchable thirst for learning and advancement.  When he involves himself in an isolated solitary experiment to create life, the resulting creature so appalls and revolts him, that he cannot contain his revulsion.  The consequent rejection of his creation culminates in a series of tragedies that could not even have entered Frankenstein’s imagination.

Theodor von Holst
from 1831 edition
source Wikipedia

Initially, the book begins with an introductory sub-plot of Robert Walton, a scientific adventurer who is on a naval quest to find a northern passage or discover the secret of the magnetic poles.  Walton is portrayed as a man intoxicated with the desire for knowledge, a clear indication that his character mirrors that of Victor Frankenstein, and his idealistic dreams parallel those of the friend he rescues (Frankenstein).  At the beginning of Frankenstein’s story, we see how he immerses himself in science and, by doing so, isolates himself from the friends and acquaintances around him, and remains housebound, separated from the outdoors. Without companionship and nature, the very things that feed our souls, he is blind to the spiritual aspects of humanity, seeing only the physiological perspective of a scientific creation.  In effect, he rejects his own Creator to put himself in His place.

In fact, the first sentence of the book, the beginning of a letter from Robert Walton to his sister, gives the reader a clue as to the lack of awareness the scientist can develop to the world around him:  “You will rejoice to hear that that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.”  In a frenzied quest for new discovery, the scientist can often lose any objectivity and will marginalize the prudent advice given by others, who have perhaps more objective insight.

In Frankenstein’s story, we get a cautionary tale of the consequences of unexamined and incautious actions based on a deification of science, yet therein also lies a theme of abandoned responsibility.  If Frankenstein had attempted to communicate with the creature and valiantly hid his disgust of it, would the outcome have been different?  Could he have humanized his creation with sympathy and nurturing?  I have my doubts. Upon the creature’s flight and escape to the woods, he discovers a family living there and, by observing them, he learns to read and write and is exposed to profound literature, which reveals both goodness and evil to him. The creature learns what it means to be human and, in fact, admires the goodness of the family.  However he ultimately chooses evil, using his rejection by humans as an excuse for his deviant actions.  Victor Frankenstein was another unsympathetic character.  Numerous times he had a chance to attempt to stop the evil he had created, yet each time he did nothing, often at the expense of a human life.  I was actually quite disgusted with him.  His inaction was almost on a level with the creature’s atrocities.

Boris Karloff
as Frankenstein’s monster
source Wikipedia

While I found the plot of this novel in some senses exaggerated, in a general sense it brought up a number of important issues for reflection.  Are we responsible for what we create and, if so, to what degree?  Is knowledge something to be pursued with unlimited passion, or should we approach it with a healthy respect, and should restrictions be put on our pursuit of it?  Does the development of character, values and morality depend on genetics or environment? Shelley brought attention to these universal and timeless issues which segued into more specific questions related to the story.  Should the creature be pitied?  Does his abandonment, rejection and isolation justify his actions of revenge?  Was Frankenstein’s rejection directly responsible for the tragic circumstances, and therefore, was he completely to blame for his own fate?  Is the creature evil, or simply a misunderstood creation, who, if loved and nurtured, would have developed love and empathy and a conscience, like most other human beings?

The story of Frankenstein was birthed during a trip to Geneva in 1816. Together with her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley spent the summer there with their companion, Lord Byron.  After Byron proposed that they each write a ghost story, Shelley found herself at a loss for inspiration.  It was only after a conversation about the “re-animation of a corpse,” that Shelley had a waking dream:

“I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.  I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion.  Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.“

And so Frankenstein was born.

Portrait of Mary Shelley (1840)
Richard Rothwell
source Wikipedia

Mary Shelley was the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstoncraft Godwin, the former a philosopher, novelist and journalist, the latter also a philosopher as well as a writer.  With such notable antecedents, Shelley’s exposure to books was unusually vast for a female of her era.  Here is a chronological list of the works of literature which she read during the years of 1814 to 1821.

Here, also, are two other excellent reviews of Frankenstein by M. Landers and Majoring in Literature for your reading pleasure!  Enjoy!

Corre, Perro, Corre – P.D. Eastman

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Hay perros grandes, perros pequeños, perros amarillos, perros verdes, perros azules, perros rojos y una fiesta al fin del libro. Este libro es divertirse por los niños.

Phew!  That’s about all for my rusty Spanish as I have about 10 reviews that I’m trying to work on.  I remember this book from my childhood.  It reads pretty simply now, even in Spanish, but I can see the value of repetition when children are learning to read or learning another language.  Prepositions and opposites are sprinkled throughout the story, adding another aspect of learning.  And after all, what child could resist rainbow-coloured dogs, dogs driving cars, a party and the repeated silly question, “¿Te gusta mi sombrero? (Do you like my hat?)” 

If anyone knows of some easy Spanish books, I’d really appreciate any recommendations.  For some reason I’m struggling with coming up with any.  It’s very sad when you can think of more Latin books to read than Spanish ……




La Curée by Émile Zola

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“On the drive home, the barouche was reduced to a crawl by the long line of carriages returning by the side of the lake.”

The title of Émile Zola’s third novel (in Zola’s recommended reading order) of the Rougon-Marquart series, La Curée, or The Kill, refers to the spoils of meat thrown to the dogs at the completion of a hunt, and so is a reflection of the wild and uncontrolled speculation in Paris of the 1850s and 1860s, where monetary greed runs rampant, spewing the biproducts of immorality, licentiousness, fraud and hypocrisy.

Aristide Rougon, has arrived in Paris from Plassans with his first wife, Angèle. Poor and provincial, Aristide dreams of wealth and a life of luxury and notoriety.  Ignited by his near fanatical desire for money, he manages through dishonest dealings to cheat and finagle his way into property speculation in this city, that is expanding at a near-combustible rate.

As usual, Zola grabs you and pulls you into the story with his lush and vibrant prose, and vivid descriptions:

“This was the time when the rush for spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches.  The appetites let loose were satisfied at last, shamelessly, amid the sound of crumbling neighbourhoods and fortunes made in six months.  The city had become an orgy of gold and women.  Vice, coming from on high, flowed through the gutters, spread out over the ornamental waters, shot up in the fountains of the public gardens, and fell on the roofs as fine rain.  At night, when people crossed the bridges, it seemed as if the Seine drew along with it, through the sleeping city, all the refuse of the streets, crumbs fallen from tables, bows of lace left on couches, false hair forgotten in cabs, banknotes that had slipped out of bodices, everything thrown out of the window by the brutality of desire and the immediate satisfaction of appetites.  Then, amid the troubled sleep of Paris, and even more clearly than during its feverish quest in broad daylight, one felt a growing sense of madness, the voluptuous nightmare of a city obsessed with gold and flesh.  The violins played until midnight; then the windows became dark and shadows descended over the city.  It was like a giant alcove in which the last candle had been blown out, the last remnant of shame extinguished.  There was nothing left in the darkness except a great rattle of furious and wearied lovemaking; while the Tuileries, by the riverside, stretched out its arms, as if for a huge embrace.”

Aristide changes his name to Saccard and, as his wealth grows, after the death of his wife he marries the young Renée Béraud du Châtel and later brings his son, Maxime, to live with them in Paris.  Renée, perpetually bored, is delighted at the thought of someone to pet and coddle and use as a tool to gain attention, and so becomes highly involved in Maxime’s moral development (or perhaps I should say, amoral development).  When we meet him in the novel as a twenty-year-old young man, he is happily aping his parents’ generation, as money flows through his fingers like water and unlimited pleasure is sought as nourishment, with little regard for the consequences.

As Saccard’s insatiable lust for money drives his every action, and he balances on the wire between wealth and ruin, Renée and Maxime fall into a comfortable and close relationship, which becomes the catalyst for a semi-incestuous affair driven by Renée’s boredom and lust for a new inventive perversion.  Yet instead of being entertained and satisfied by their liaison, through different circumstances, Renée finds herself debased and abandoned.  There are no loyalties in the new Paris, except with the reward of monetary gain, and true human feeling has all but been extinguished by obsessive desires for money and decadence.  Renée is a casualty of little importance.

Le Forhu à la fin de la curée
1746

Zola’s novels have an air of tragedy about them that is not necessarily brought on only by the actions of the characters or the plot of the story.  In Zola’s eyes, each character is trapped by their inherent nature in a cycle from which they cannot escape.  They are helpless and we get the sense of a drowning man who cannot be rescued, or a figure who cannot be pulled from in front of a speeding train.  This echoes the ideas of fate supported by the ancient Greeks, in that there is nothing you can do to change your destiny.  I’m not certain that I agree with his presentation.  We all have the ability to choose in each situation and, while each choice may entail a different degree of difficulty, our decisions do shape our fate to a greater or lesser degree.  Choice is what separates man from animal, and Zola’s portrayal of man trapped in an hereditary cycle exemplifies the destructive consequences when man follows only his instincts without an ethical or moral base.

This was the only Zola I was able to finish for Fanda Classiclit’s Zola Addiction, but I was happy to finish only one.  Zola is not an author I want to rush through; he makes you want to sink into his settings, try his prose out on your tongue and learn more about the historical content.  Money is the next Zola on my list and I’m looking forward to it!

Other Rougon-Macquart Series Reviews (Zola’s recommended order):

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

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“We were in Study Hall, when the Headmaster entered, followed by a new boy dressed in regular clothes and a school servant carrying a large desk.”

Emma Roualt has been raised in a convent but during her formative years and religious education, she has somehow managed to get sentimental romance novels smuggled in to her.  When she leaves the convent, the sisters are relieved to see her go as there is some indication that Emma is not the pious, compliant young woman that they were hoping to produce.  Does Emma come by her stubborn and idealistic outlook naturally, or are the novels responsible for corrupting her character?

Soon after Emma returns to her father’s house, she meets the doctor, Charles Bovary, and imagines the feelings of emotion she experiences under his regard, love.  When the first wife of Charles passes away, Emma is happy to become his wife, yet almost immediately begins to wonder why the passionate, overwhelming feelings of a romantic love seem to elude her.  Quite soon she seeks admiration and passion outside her marital relationship, first with Leon Dupuis, a law clerk, and then with the sophisticated Rodolphe Boulanger. Drawn into a web of deceit by her need for a story-like romance, Emma begins an affair, first with Rodolphe and later with a more worldly Leon, who has now spent years in the city and knows how to conduct himself like a truly indulged and hardened man-about-town.  Neither man truly cares for her.  Each is attracted by her beauty and her passionate regard for him, yet soon these shallow emotions begin to unravel and the men tire of their paramour.  Emma, now heavily in debt and still lacking the love and desire that she equates with a meaningful life, decides to take poison and her death culminates in the tragic death of Charles and the sentencing of her daughter to a life of poverty and toil.

The Death of Bovary
Charles Léandre (1931)
source Wikimedia Commons

And so, what can we say about Emma?  She is certainly not a sympathetic character and it seems rather apparent that Flaubert didn’t mean to make her one.  How is responsible is she for her fate?  Does she perpetrate her own demise or is she an unwilling victim of circumstances?

One could certainly make excuses for Emma and say that she was trapped, not only in a simple, colourless and rigid society, but in a loveless marriage (on her part), and in a situation where she had little opportunity for following anything other than the status-quo.  However, Emma had been given an education of a type through the nuns, and though it might not have been wide in its scope, it certainly should have taught her the importance of honesty and virtue and goodness.  Emma chooses to sneak sentimental romances into the abbey to read, just as she chooses to believe what she reads should be the way of life, in spite of the evidence in front of her face against it, and she chooses to have adulterous affairs at the risk of the ruin of her reputation and that of her husband’s.  She also chooses to borrow money, placing her family heavily in debt and, the means of borrowing the money are brought about with deceit on her part to keep her actions hidden.  So I don’t really buy the “poor Emma Bovary, she is a victim of circumstance” excuse.  She keeps her illicit relationships secret, as well as the fact that she is borrowing money, and by the very fact that she does these things covertly, she MUST know that these actions are wrong.  Instead she chooses to do them anyway, for her own selfish emotional gratification and, as we see, she reaps consequences that were perhaps beyond her scope of imagining.

I didn’t dislike this book, but when I read I like to find something that stirs an emotional or an intellectual response, which is part of the conversation with the author.  With Flaubert, while there were certainly moments that sparkled, overall I was left a little flat.  The whole plot was built around a shallow, vain, deluded young girl who was supposedly corrupted early in life by her choice of reading.  No one noticed and, judging by the manner in which Flaubert portrays the setting and characters, even if they did, they perhaps would have done nothing to enlighten her.  While I wanted to pity Emma and make excuses for her, there was something fundamentally wrong with her thinking and the mechanisms she used to process life and the world around her.  Was it due to her reading material, or was she already a damaged person and the books only served to increase the self-serving, emotional fantasy-life that was already expanding within her?  I don’t think we can know.  For me it would have been infinitely more interesting if Flaubert chose to investigate this issue but instead we only see the effect of her delusions without being able to truly surmise the cause.  And that is a tragedy because Emma Bovary deserved a story that generated compassion for her and not distaste and impatience at her emotionally bankrupt behaviour and dramatic actions.  In spite of some spots of brilliance, I feel Flaubert missed a great opportunity and, once again, Emma seems to be the one that pays for it.

Translated by Lydia Davis

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

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First Edition Dustjacket
source Wikipedia

“In the last days of Narnia, far up to the west beyond Lantern Waste and close beside the great waterfall, there lived an Ape.”

The Last Battle is the final book in the Narnia Chronicles. With the last three books Lewis seemed to be moving further from the realm of children’s novels and into a more intellectual adult world of surprising complexities.

Esoteric in its make-up, The Last Battle begins with an ape named Shift, who, by dressing a donkey named Puzzle in a lion’s skin, tries to convince the Narnians that Aslan has returned to Narnia.  Prompted by Calormen treachery, they soon combine Aslan into Tashlan, a mixing of Aslan and the Calmoren god Tash, and force the Narnians to work, cutting down the Talking Trees of the forest for profit. Prince Tirian and his trusty unicorn, Jewel, discover the falsity of their enterprise, but are taken captive by the Calormens, only to be freed by Eustace and Jill  They discover the fraud of the false “Tashlan” while rescuing Jewel from the stables, but learn that Cair Paravel has fallen to the Calormens.  The Battle of the Stable is fought with the Calormens and their forces, whereupon Eustace, Jill and the one faithful dwarf, Poggin, find themselves inside the stable, followed by Tirian in his battle with Rishda Tarakan, the leader of the Calormens.  Instead of a stable, they find that they are in a beautiful and wondrous land, but then, to the surprised horror of all, Tash unexpectedly appears and snatches Rishda under his arm.  The Pevensie children appear (minus Susan) and Peter orders Tash to leave, whereupon Aslan comes and all the dead people and animals either file by on Aslan’s right and enter Aslan’s country or file by on his left and disappear. The old earthly “outside” Narnia begins to be devoured by dragons and giant lizards, and finally the sun is squeezed out by a giant, yet Aslan leads his people “further up and further in” to the real Narnia.  It may appear to be the end of the chronicles but, as Lewis says, “… it was only the beginning of the real story …… they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Emeth, the Calmoren warrior who is allowed into Aslan’s country, is a curious insertion by Lewis.  Emeth has followed another god with a sincere belief all his life, yet when he meets Aslan, the lion tells him, “Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me …… if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he is truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him.  And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.”  Lewis is not advocating universal salvation, only that anyone who is truly and openly seeking the truth about God, will surely find him.  In contrast, the Narnian dwarves are true cynics; while they have been raised in Narnia and told about Aslan, they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the truth and, though Aslan gives them a marvellous banquet, in their self-deception they are not able to even properly taste the good food set before them.  In spite of being raised in Narnia, their wilful refusal to entertain any ideas but their own will prevent them from seeing Aslan’s Country.

While this novel is written for children, Lewis has included concepts that would be beyond some adults.  Professor Digory’s comment near the end of the book, “It’s all in Plato, all in Plato ….” gives us a clue to one Platonic theme, although there are a few enmeshed in the chronicles.  In Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave, cave-dwellers believe images on the wall in front of them are real, but find they are only flickering shadows cast by more original objects held up against a fire which is behind them.  One of the cave-dwellers turns around to see what is behind his back and why the objects on the wall appear as they do, then he ascends out of the cave into the world above where he sees that the artificial copies on the wall of the cave and the fire itself were only themselves inferior copies of a much more original reality. Plato believed that every evident appearance in the material world is a communion with a higher, perfect spiritual reality.  For example, anything that attempts to capture beauty, will never capture the reality of beauty perfectly. An overworld of self-subsisting ideas exists beyond the world of material things, and these ideas, or forms, themselves participate in the one single highest reality, Plato called “the Good.”  Thus, in The Last Battle, the earthly Narnia is only a copy or a shadow of the Heavenly Narnia which is the form of the perfect reality.

And lastly, it would be appropriate to touch on the fate of Susan Pevensie. All the Pevensies appear in the real Narnia because they have recently died in a train crash, all except Susan, who has grown vain and self-absorbed, and has moved away from their adventures and beliefs of Narnia.  I am a little perplexed as to what to make of this revelation.  On one hand, I am bothered that Lewis treated her fate in a rather short, curt manner, after she had been such an important character in the other stories.  On the other hand, I am glad that Lewis did not make a perfectly “happily ever after situation.”  Given that Susan had replaced her faith with material desires, it was providential that she did not perish in the crash that killed her family; there is still hope that she can find the real Narnia in the end.  As Lewis wrote in a letter to a child:

“The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan.  She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman.  But there’s plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end ……. in her own way.”

Wow!  What a finale!  And now I can say that I’ve read all the Chronicles of Narnia and have a much better understanding of them.  I can hardly believe all the themes and ideas that Lewis wrote into them and though I know another reading will bring more enlightening details, there will always be more to discover!

C.S. Lewis Project 2014

 

Other Narnia Books

 

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

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“The Revd Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of ______, let us call it Barchester.”

The Honest Gossip Newspaper


In many a town in England there are given charitable bequests to church dioceses, and the honest public assumes that the monies are distributed in a fair and equitable way, in a manner that benefits all who have need of them.  Yet this learned reporter has discovered that in a small holding in Barsetshire, there has been a shocking exploitation of this practice, resulting in twelve respectable old gentlemen being cheated out of their livelihood.  And who is the avaricious fiend to be so bold as to expropriate funds which are not solely meant for him?

The Revd Septimus Harding, the warden of Hiram’s Hospital in Barsetshire, it has been discovered, earns 800 pounds per annum for his position as warden and overseer of the legacy left by the philanthropic John Hiram, namesake of Hiram’s Hospital, yet the gentlemen who were meant to benefit from his legacy, receive housing and a paltry one shilling four pence per day to meet all their needs in their tender and uncertain later years of life.

Ask yourself, can you as a common man remain indifferent to the plight of others?   Can you remain indifferent to the misappropriation of funds by a man who not only takes bread out of the mouths of his brothers, but whose actions leaves a stain on the offices of the sacred and respected agents of mother Church?  Oh, for shame you vainglorious men who have no respect for what is sacred, yet greedily engorge yourselves with money to line your already comfortable existence!  Is it to be borne?  No!  Mr. Harding must be revealed as the avaricious culprit he is, and the money given to the rightful recipients, who deserve it far more than a warden who presently lives comfortably on this legacy while doing nothing to earn its bestowal.  Who will see that justice is served in such a uncomfortable yet critical situation?  This reporter knows just the man!

Our young and zealous reformer, Mr. John Bold, has been working industriously to illuminate this unfortunate circumstance and expose the corruption that has so carefully been concealed .  Can we trust this gentleman in his noble purpose?  Certainly!  Not only does his estimable reputation speak volumes, but in spite of his relationship to the aforementioned’s lovely daughter, Eleanor, he will not let possible future familial ties stand in the way of serving justice.  We have learned that he has wisely consulted a respectable and reputable law firm to deal with this perplexing and delicate matter and that, once begun, nothing will stand in his way.  The bishop and his pretentious son, the archdeacon Theophilus Grantly (also son-in-law to the accused), can puff and blow all they like, but we all know which side is valiantly trumpeting the truth.  It will be heard, and the Reverend Harding will be made to choke on it.


——————————————————-

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows
John Constable 1831
(Trollope said his first vision for The Warden came while walking in
the cathedral close of Salisbury Cathedral)
source Wikipedia

This is a sample of what poor Septimus Harding, warden of Hiram’s Hospital had to withstand: an unfair accusation, judgement, an attack on his character and the possible loss of his livelihood.  His son-in-law, the archdeacon, attempts to defend his father-in-law, yet in a worldly, materialistic, dictatorial manner, which his father-in-law cannot respect or accept.  Harding’s simple, gentle, sacrificial nature, while at first bends under the pressure of his contemporaries, eventually asserts itself in his determination to act in an honourable manner.  In a case where people’s good intentions do more harm than good, we realize that law and justice followed blindly, can have unexpected negative repercussions.  Love and friendship hold a human value that money can never equal, and the loss of the former can create an emotional deprivation that is felt long after the incident is over.

What others said:

Behold the Stars:  “I love it, though – it’s a gentle novel, with real, ‘whole’ characters (George Orwell described it as one of his best works), and Septimus Harding is one of my favourite characters of all time.”

Avid Reader’s Musings:  “Bold sees his purpose as noble and right even though he’s hurting the people he loves.  It makes the reader question his decision, is it truly motivated by his beliefs or by his pride?”

Fig and Thistle:  “Each character is vividly unique and the dialogue is engaging.  This book certainly has a heavy dose of wit and shrewd society skewering, but without cynicism.”

This first book in the Barsetshire Chronicles read-along, hosted by Avid Reader’s Musings and Fig & Thistle, proved to be an excellent introduction to Anthony Trollope and I have already cracked open the next book, Barchester Towers, to continue my visits with the characters and happenings of Barsetshire.

The Barsetshire Chronicles